Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

The drunk man did not answer. The glass of mescal sat as it had sat when Billy first entered the bar.

Es el sello, said the younger man.

El sello?

Si.

He said that he objected to the seal which was the seal of an oppressive government. He said that he would not drink from such a bottle. That it was a matter of honor.

Billy looked at the drunk man.

Es mentira, the drunk man said.

Mentira? said Billy.

Si. Mentira.

Billy looked at the younger man. He asked him what it was that was a lie but the younger man told him not to preoccupy himself. Nada es mentira, he said.

No es cuest16n de ningun sello, the drunk man said.

He spoke slowly but not without facility. He had turned and addressed his statement to the younger man beside him. Then he turned back and continued to stare at Billy. Billy made a circle with his finger. Otra vez, he said. The barman reached and took up the bottle.

You want to drink that stinkin catpiss in favor of good american whiskey, Billy said, you be my guest.

Mande? said the drunk man.

The barman sat uncertainly. Then he leaned and poured the empty glasses and picked up the cork and pushed it back into the bottle. Billy raised his glass. Salud, he said. He drank. All drank. Save for the drunk man. Out in the street the old spanish bells rang once, rang twice. The drunk leaned forward. He reached past the glass of mescal standing before him and seized the bottle of mescal again. He picked it up and poured Billy's glass full with a slight circular movement of his hand. As if the small tumbler must be filled in some prescribed fashion. Then he tipped the bottle up and set it on the table and leaned back.

The barman and the two younger men sat holding their glasses. Billy sat looking at themescal. He leaned back in the chair. He looked toward the door. He could see Nino standing in the street. The musicians who had fled were already playing again somewhere in another street, another taverna. Or perhaps it was other musicians. He reached and took up the mescal and held it to the light. A smokelike sediment curled in the glass. Small bits of debris. No one moved. He tilted the glass and drank.

Salud, called the younger man. They drank. The barman drank. They clapped their empty tumblers on the table and they smiled around. Then Billy leaned to one side and spat the mescal in the floor.

In the ensuing silence the pueblo itself seemed to have been sucked up by the desert round. There was no sound anywhere. The drunk man sat stilled in the act of reaching for his glass. The younger man lowered his eyes. In the shadow of the lamp his eyes even looked closed and may have been. The drunk man balled his reaching hand and lowered it to the table. Billy circled one finger in the air slowly. Otra vez, he said.

The barman looked at Billy. He looked at the leadenaEU'eyed patriot sitting with his fist upright beside his glass. Era demasiado fuerte para el, he said. Demasiado fuerte.

Billy didnt take his eyes from the drunk man. Mas mentiras, he said. He said that it was not at all the case that the mescal was too strong for him as the barman claimed.

They sat looking at the mescal bottle. At the black half moon of the bottle's shadow beside the bottle. When the drunk man did not move or speak Billy reached across the table for the whiskey bottle and poured the glasses round once more and set the bottle back on the table. Then he pushed back his chair and stood.

The drunk man placed both hands on the edge of the table.

The man who had so far not spoken at all said in english that if he reached for his billfold the man would shoot him.

I dont doubt that for a minute, Billy said. He spoke to the bartender without taking his eyes from the man across the table. Cuanto debo? he said.

Cinco dolares? said the barman.

He reached into his shirtpocket with two fingers and took out his money and dealt it open with his thumb and slid loose a fivedollar bill and laid it on the table. He looked at the man who'd spoken to him in english. Will he shoot me in the back? he said.

The man looked up at him from under his hatbrim and smiled. No, he said. I dont think so.

Billy touched the brim of his hat and nodded to the men at the table. Caballeros, he said. And turned to start for the door leaving his filled glass on the table.

If he calls to you do not turn around, the young man said.

He did not stop and he did not turn and he'd very nearly reached the door when the man did call. Joven, he said.

He stopped. The horses out in the street raised their heads and looked at him. He looked at the distance to the door which was no more than his own length. Walk, he said. Just walk. But he didnt walk. He turned around.

The drunk man had not moved. He sat in his chair and the young man who spoke english had risen and stood beside him with one hand on his shoulder. They looked to be posed for some album of outlawry.

Me llama embustero? said the drunk man.

No, he said.

Embustero? He clawed at his shirt and ripped it open. It was fastened with snaps and it opened easily and with no sound. As if perhaps the snaps were worn and loose from just such demonstrations in the past. He sat holding his shirt wide open as if to invite again the trinity of rifleballs whose imprint lay upon his smooth and hairless chest just over his heart in so perfect an isoscelian stigmata. No one at the table moved. None looked at the patriot nor at his scars for they had seen it all before. They watched the guero where he stood framed in the door. They did not move and there was no sound and he listened for something in the town that would tell him that it was not also listening for he had a sense that some part of his arrival in this place was not only known but ordained and he listened for the musicians who had fled upon his even entering these premises and who themselves perhaps were listening to the silence from somewhere in those cratered mud precincts and he listened for any sound at all other than the dull thud of his heart dragging the blood through the small dark corridors of his corporeal life in its slow hydraulic tolling. He looked at the man who'd warned him not to turn but that was all the warning that man had. What he saw was that the only manifest artifact of the history of this negligible republic where he now seemed about to die that had the least authority or meaning or claim to substance was seated here before him in the sallow light of this cantina and all else from men's lips or from men's pens would require that it be beat out hot all over again upon the anvil of its own enactment before it could even qualify as a lie. Then it all passed. He took off his hat and stood. Then for better or for worse he put it on again and turned and walked out the door and untied the horses and mounted up and rode out down the narrow street leading the packhorse and he did not look back.

* * *

HE'D NOT GOT CLEAR of the town before a drop of rain the size of a middle taw landed in the brim of his hat. Then another. He looked up into a cloudless sky. The visible planets burning in the east. There was no wind nor smell of rain in the air yet the drops fell the more. The horse wanted to stop in the road and the rider looked back at the dark town. The few small window squares of dim and reddish light. The smack of the rain falling on the hard clay of the road sounded like horses somewhere in the darkness crossing a bridge. He was beginning to feel drunk. He halted the horse and then turned and rode back.

He rode the horse through the first door he came to, dropping the packhorse's rope and leaning low along his horse's neck to clear the doorbeam. Inside he sat the animal in the selfsame rain and he looked up to see the selfsame stars above him. He reined the horse about and rode out again and entered another doorway and at once the muted clatter of the raindrops on the crown of his hat ceased. He got down and stomped about in the dark to see what was underfoot. He went out and brought in the packhorse and untied the diamondhitch and pulled his soogan off onto the ground and unbuckled and pulled down the packframe and hobbled the animal and drove it back out into the rain. Then he pulled loose the latigo on his saddlehorse and pulled off the saddle and saddlebags and stood the saddle against the wall and knelt down and felt out the ropes on the soogan and untied and unrolled it and sat and pulled off his boots. He was feeling drunker. He took off his hat and lay down. The horse walked past his head and stood looking out the door. Dont you step on me damn you, he said.